A. Field of the Invention
The invention is a hammer for use in playing a guitar, the combination of the guitar and the hammer, and a method of using the apparatus of the invention.
B. Description of the Related Art
Hand-held hammers or mallets are used to strike percussion instruments to generate a sound. Common examples include drums, marimbas and xylophones. Hammers may be used to strike a string under tension to cause the string to vibrate and to generate sound from the vibrating string. Common examples include pianos and members of the hammered dulcimer family. The piano utilizes a mechanical action to propel a hammer into the strings when a key is depressed. The hammered dulcimer has no mechanical action and playing a hammered dulcimer involves striking one or more strings with hand-held hammers. Both the piano and hammered dulcimer have strings of fixed pitch and the number of strings determining the range of the instrument.
The acoustic guitar is a plucked-string instrument of the lute family, with a resonating body and strings running along a neck. In the conventional playing of a guitar, the player utilizes either a pick or the player's fingers to pluck a string, causing the string to vibrate and generating a sound. The vibrating length of each string, and hence the pitch of the sound generated by the string, is varied by “fretting” the string; namely, by depressing the string against the neck of the guitar using the player's fingers.
During play, the body of the guitar is held against the torso of the player. For a right-handed player utilizing a pick, the pick is gripped between the thumb and index finger of the player's right hand, with the wide dimension of the pick oriented generally parallel to the strings. The player's left hand grips the neck of the guitar and appropriately depresses a string, determining the pitch of the sound produced by the plucked string.
An electric guitar is similar to an acoustic guitar but includes an electromagnetic or piezoelectric pickup to generate an electrical signal from the vibrating string, an amplifier to increase the amplitude of the resulting signal and a loudspeaker to convert the amplified electrical signal to sound. The electric guitar may dispense with the resonating body of the acoustic guitar.
The prior does not teach the present Invention.